


First Comes the Honeymoon

by byericacameron



Category: Cut & Run - Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Not Beta Read, Only One Bed, Sidewinder exists but Kelly wasn't placed with them, Strangers on a plane, they each have a rocky romantic history, travel as an escape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:54:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27554920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byericacameron/pseuds/byericacameron
Summary: Kelly thought he would be coming to Mexico with a new bride to enjoy two weeks of sun, sex, and surprises. He got surprised all right, but it was the kind that left him getting on the flight to his honeymoon alone and bribing the flight attendant to practically bury him in mini liquor bottles. Thankfully, another surprise was waiting for him on the flight, and this one was in the form of a gorgeous detective from Boston who was also escaping some less-than-stellar romantic entanglements. Drunk Kelly had thought it was a brilliant idea to invite the handsome stranger, whose name he hadn't even learned, to come on Kelly's honeymoon with him.Sober Kelly thought drunk Kelly was a fucking genius, but could accidents and bad luck really lead to anything that lasted more than the length of the trip?----This is based on the storyDrunk on a Planebytoboldlydammitjimand it continues from exactly where the original leaves off. I recommend starting there and treating that as chapter one of this story.
Relationships: Julian Cross/Cameron Jacobs, Kelly Abbott/Nick O'Flaherty, Zane Garrett/Ty Grady, past Ty Grady/Nick O'Flaherty
Comments: 14
Kudos: 11





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Drunk on a Plane](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3926662) by [toboldlydammitjim](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toboldlydammitjim/pseuds/toboldlydammitjim). 



> I don't even know with this. I read Drunk on a Plane and thought it was adorable and then this happened. 
> 
> I can't make promises on how often it will be updated, but there will definitely be several chapters!

Kelly wasn't sure if it was abrupt motion or abrupt nausea that woke him up first, but both of them sucked. Worse, as soon as he was awake enough to register the nausea, the headache followed immediately after. 

"Oh, fuck my life," he muttered.

The snort that transformed into a soft laugh beside him didn't make anything any better. At least, it didn't until memories started to emerge though the haze of headache and hangover. The wedding that never happened because his bride had abandoned him at the altar. The decision to grab the honeymoon and run if she was going to insist on keeping their house. The deal he’d made with the flight attendant to keep the alcohol flowing as much as possible when it was restricted to tiny shot-sized bottles. Mostly, though, he remembered russet curls, green eyes, empathetic company, and a fucking killer smile. Nick, the detective with an annulment in his past and a dreaded wedding in his future. More importantly, the **_man_** that I Kelly had invited to share his honeymoon.

Apparently, his hypothetical bisexuality had become a testable theory. If Nick decided he was game, anyway.

"Here. Which do you want first?" In time with the soft, accented words, two scarred, pale hands entered his limited field of vision--one holding an airplane barf bag and the other holding a mini bottle of water and an individual package of Advil.

"Bless you and your entire family line," Kelly breathed as he shakily reached for the water. Proving himself both useful and brilliant once again, Nick the open the package, dropped the pills into his hand, and held them up for Kelly to take when he was ready.

It was nothing, a tiny gesture that wasn't any effort on Nick's part, but it still smacked Kelly in his already bruised heart. Even most people kind enough to be prepared with water and meds for a drunk stranger wouldn't take the time to unwrap the pills to make life easier on the drunk. More, Kelly wasn’t used to people caring for him that way. He was the medic, the counselor, the confidant, the caretaker. The last people who’d bothered to take care of him like this were his parents, and they’d both died a long time ago. Nick’s kind gesture brought up unexpected memories of Kelly’s mother offering cold medicine when he was a kid, and the image was so clear it almost brought tears to Kelly’s eyes.

As quickly as he could without setting off his nausea or his tear ducts, Kelly downed the pills and the entire bottle of water. Only then did he risk a glance at Nick. "Believe it or not, I usually handle my liquor better than this."

"I think you can be excused given the circumstances," Nick allowed, only a slight smirk giving away the tease.

Kelly sighed. “Would you buy it if I blamed the altitude?”

“No, but I could pretend to if that makes you feel better.”

“I’d appreciate that.” The water had finally settled Kelly’s stomach enough that he could sit up straight, and the first thing he noticed was the number of people crammed into the aisles. “Oh, shit. We landed?”

“I think the jolt of hitting the ground was what woke you up,” Nick said. “But I was going to wait until most everyone else was off anyway, if it’s okay with you.”

“Uh, yeah. Sitting here for another minute or two seems like a good idea. Maybe by the time I stand, the plane will stop tilting so much.” That was probably why he hadn’t realized they were on the ground. His stomach was pretty convinced they were still up at 30,000 feet. And the time would give him a chance to talk to Nick a bit more, too. “I don’t think you said before. How long are you staying in Cancun?”

“I wasn’t sure how much of that conversation you’d even remember,” Nick admitted.

Kelly scoffed. “I wasn’t _that_ drunk, Nick, damn. I just, you know, made the mistake of mainlining twelve different liquors like a line of shots, and I did it on an empty stomach. Stupid, but not erase-my-memory stupid. Which means that, yes, I do also remember hitting on you and inviting you to be my other half on my…my what? I don’t even know what to call this trip anymore.”

“The thank-god-I-didn’t-get-married trip?” Nick offered.

Trying to ignore how his stomach flipped at the reminder of…everything, Kelly shook his head. “A little wordy, isn’t it?”

“The TGIF trip?”

“TGIF?”

“Thank God I’m Free.”

Kelly snorted. “Well, that’s definitely one way to look at the shitshow my life currently is.”

“It might suck right now, but it’ll pass, Kels. That much I’m sure of.” Nick looked away, his attention focusing on the aisle instead of on Kelly, but before Kelly could ask what exactly Nick meant by that, the redhead was on his feet and reaching for the overhead bins. “C’mon. Time for us to vacate the premises unless we want to piss off the flight crew.”

Kelly rose out of his seat, surprised to see how close to the front the last of the passengers suddenly were. He wasn’t usually that oblivious to his surroundings, but he hadn’t even noticed their movement while he was talking to Nick. The nausea that’d woken him up was thankfully almost gone and probably more a product of being jolted out of a drunk sleep than anything else. He shuffled out of the seat, grabbing his bags along the way, and then he followed Nick up the aisle.

It didn’t escape his attention that Nick kept shifting the conversation away from actually saying yes or no to Kelly’s invitation. The fact that Nick hadn’t come straight out and said no yet gave Kelly a little bit of hope that he wouldn’t be spending the next two weeks alone. However, he also wasn’t sure how to probe for the reasons Nick was hesitating. They got along well so far, Nick hadn’t seemed offended when Kelly flirted, and Nick himself had said that he wasn’t heading in to Cancun with any definitive plans. Kelly was offering up a vacation more or less for free. There were a lot of reasons to say yes and only a few to say no.

Like not wanting to spend actual time with Kelly. A plane ride was one thing after all. A vacation was completely different. Maybe the beginnings of friendship—or something else—Kelly had been feeling weren’t reciprocated. Nick was clearly a genuinely _nice_ guy. Maybe he just didn’t want to say no to Kelly’s face while they were still trapped in a plane with no quick escape.

Testing his unwelcome theory, Kelly plodded up the aisle far slower than his usual pace to let the gap between himself and Nick grow wider. Nick didn’t look back. Within moments, he was so far ahead of Kelly that he couldn’t see him around the turns of the plane and the jet bridge. He sighed and kept his head down as he walked and, instead of thinking about Nick, tried to come up with some way to spend his time in a romantic resort while on what should have been his honeymoon. Not much except weed, alcohol, and the ocean sounded appealing, but maybe it would look different once he was on the premises and could look at all the different on-site activities and regional tours. Whatever. He went on this trip mostly to keep it out of his ex-fiancé’s hands. Having fun while he was here would be a fringe benefit; it wasn’t the expectation. Nick’s presence wouldn’t have made a difference either way. At least, that was what Kelly tried to tell himself.

“Are you always this slow, Kels, or is it only when you’re stuck somewhere between drunk and hungover?”

“I—no. Neither. Sorry.” Seeing Nick standing there just on the edge of the boarding area, clearly waiting for him, was so surprising Kelly couldn’t come up with anything coherent to say. “Lead the way, Irish.”

“No matter where I go, I always seem to pick up that nickname,” Nick muttered as they fell into step and headed through the airport. He must have noticed Kelly’s curious glance because he sighed and explained. “Irish is one of about a thousand nicknames my friends call me.”

“Bah.” Kelly grinned, filled with a giddy lightness he never expected to feel on this trip without the help of legal—or mildly illegal—substances. “ _Nick_ names.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Nick muttered, rolling his eyes but not quite able to hide the twitch at the corner of his lips. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You’re not the first to say so.”

“That I believe.”

Kelly made a face, mostly to see if it made Nick laugh—it did—and then happily let the conversation lapse. Despite being in the largest of the airport’s terminals, it was smaller than a lot of the US and international terminals Kelly had walked through. Still, he hadn’t ever been here before, so he kept Nick in his periphery just to make sure he kept up with the taller man’s pace but otherwise let his attention wander freely.

So many new faces and places and experiences, none of them tainted by memories. Sure he was _supposed_ to come here with Her, but they hadn’t actually been here. Only seeing sappily in love couples would be a reminder of what had happened and the fact that, yet again, he’d been abandoned by someone he’d loved. But there was so much new here. And there was Nick. Even if the stranger didn’t take Kelly up on the offer to share his vacation, Kelly thought he had a chance at convincing the guy to hang out once in a while during their stay.

Slowly and mostly silently, they worked their way through immigration, collected their bags, and approached customs, and the whole time, Kelly pondered the problem of Nick, last name still unknown. Yes, the guy was hot. Yes, it would be fantastic to not be alone every night. Yes, someone at least willing to pretend to want Kelly would make the sting of his ex’s decisions hurt a little less. Despite all that, though, Kelly _liked_ Nick too much to want such a disposable relationship with him. Sex was great, but it came and went and would always come again. Fuckbuddy arrangements never worked out, especially not with Kelly. His heart got tied up in whoever he was with too fast. A new friend, though?

Kelly nodded to himself and made a decision. Friends. They could at least trade information and try to become friends.

Hoping for anything else would be asking for too much. The way his luck had been, he’d be shocked if he even got that much.


	2. Chapter 2

Nick was a fucking self-destructive moron. Following a stranger to their hotel with the intention of letting himself be used as a distraction after a failed attempt at marriage was bad enough. When he was strongly attracted to that stranger? Horrible idea. He already had one best friend turned ex-boyfriend turned best friend/unrequited love. There was no space in his head or his life for another relationship that complicated.

_And yet, here you fucking are_ , he grumbled to himself as he followed Kelly onto the shuttle that would take them to the all-inclusive resort where the other man should have been spending his honeymoon.

He didn’t have to be here. In fact, he hadn’t booked anything beyond the one way plane ticket. Nick could have jumped on any shuttle to any hotel and just made it work, but the longer he’d kept from answering Kelly’s request to join him, the sadder the guy’s eyes looked, and Nick couldn’t take it. Even if it was a horrible idea, for a whole lot of reasons, to share a room with the guy, Nick could at least get a room at the same hotel and meet up with Kelly every so often. At least to make sure the guy didn’t get blind drunk again and end up drowning himself in the pool accidentally.

They finally got through customs and headed toward the area for shuttle pickups. He thought he knew the name of the resort Kelly was booked into from spotting one of the pamphlets he’d dropped on the empty middle seat, but he wasn’t positive, so he let Kels take the lead.

The silence between them was beginning to bother Nick. That in itself was weird. Nick wasn’t overly talkative in most situations. He could hold his own when it counted, but he could just as easily go a couple days without saying a word. Kelly, though, had only been silent so far when he’d been asleep or when he was edging into looking miserable. His expression now wasn’t as upset as he’d looked when he walked out of the jet bridge, but it wasn’t as happy as he’d been teasing Nick about _nick_ names. He didn’t know Kelly well enough yet to know how to knock him out of his own head without being an asshole about it, yet he wanted to know how to work such magic, and wasn’t _that_ interesting.

Instead of getting it wrong, Nick bided his time and hoped patience would be the right answer for this situation. He took his phone out and sent a quick update so his sister would know he’d landed safely, and then he spent a couple minutes responding to the backlog of texts in Sidewinder’s group conversation. Only when Kelly began to gather his bags did Nick look up. The shuttle had arrived, and Kelly was edging closer to the curb to wait for the doors to open. Nick saw a few others doing the same, so he picked up his pace and slid into place behind Kelly. It was probably a little too close to stand, but he didn’t like the idea of someone else getting between them right now.

They got onboard first and by some strange, silent agreement, moved directly to the rear bench seat of the big bus. Apparently Kelly didn’t like having anyone sitting behind him either. It only took a few seconds for Nick to stow their bigger bags on the overhead rack while Kelly automatically worked on getting the rest of their gear situated under their row. Then, they each claimed two seats and fucking sprawled to keep anyone else from joining them back here.

“Hey, Nick? I’m sorry.” Kelly was looking at him dead-on when Nick snapped his head toward his seatmate to try to figure out where the hell this was coming from. Nothing on Kels’s face offered any clues, so Nick held his tongue and waited for Kelly to continue.

With what can only be described as a brave smile, Kelly kept talking. “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot, okay? I’m paying for two people whether it gets used or not, and so I offered it to you because we got along, and I thought it would be fun. If you don’t want to accept the offer, you can just say so. We don’t actually know each other, after all. You don’t owe me anything.”

"Look, it's not..." Nick sighed and rubbed his bottom lip, hating himself a little bit for even having to have this conversation even while he knew, for both their sakes, he couldn’t avoid it. "I appreciate the offer, and I would be happy to spend time with you while we're here, but it's safer if I get my own room."

"Safer, huh?" The look on Kelly’s face was a little too perceptive for Nick’s comfort. "For me or you?"

_Both of us_ , Nick thought, but he said, "You," because that was the part that mattered. Too much shit had happened on his tours, and his work with the Boston Police Department wasn’t a lot better. Most nights, his dreams were either blood soaked and full of screaming or silent and deadly dark. Either way, Nick woke up swinging too often to risk spending a single night with someone who couldn’t protect themselves. Forget a string of nights. “I get nightmares that can be kind of intense.”

Nick expected protests or questions, but Kelly wasn’t saying anything. Instead, he tilted his head and studied Nick like a puzzle, and then his gaze softened. "How long did you spend in the sandbox?"

The question put Nick on alert immediately. “What?”

An understanding smile spread across Kelly’s face. "Army or Marines, Irish?"

"Marines.” Nick swallowed hard, completely thrown off but willing to see where this was going. He pushed up the left sleeve of his long-sleeve Henley and showed Kelly the USMC Recon Jack that sprawled across his forearm. “I was Force Recon."

"Oorah, Marine," Kelly said as he pushed the right sleeve of his t-shirt up to reveal an anchor tattoo with a ribbon underneath that read NAVY. Nick lifted his hand, fingers tingling with the urge to trade the lines of that beautifully traditional ink. "I was a corpsman embedded with a Recon team for about a decade."

Only after Kelly mentioned behind a corpsman did Nick realize that what he'd thought were ropes coiling around the anchor's shank were snakes and that Kelly’s fingers had partially obscured a detail at the top of the design—a pair of wings. It was a combination of a doctor's caduceus and the Navy anchor. Nick had seen the combination before on corpsman he'd known, and yet there was something entrancing about seeing that symbol on Kelly's skin. Maybe it was just how unexpected it was. That was doubtful, though. Nick was pretty sure it has a lot more to do with his growing fascination with Kelly himself.

"Which team were you with?" Kelly let his sleeve go.

Losing sight of the tattoo jolted Nick back into to the conversation. "I, uh... Sidewinder. My team was Sidewinder."

"No shit?" Kelly's changeable eyes sparkled. "I heard stories about you guys. Always wanted to meet your team, but I was with Ripcord. We never seemed to end up in the same base at the same time."

The odd thing was, Nick had heard about Ripcord, too. Specifically, he’d heard about the batshit crazy medic who kept them all from dying in the desert, but if he asked Kelly about those stories, Nick might have to answer questions about Sidewinder stories, and he wasn’t quite up for that yet. It did, however, put sharing a room into a new light. Kelly had survived multiple tours in active warzones with Recon squads. If Kelly was the same Devil Doc Nick had heard rumors about, the guy also had a sparring record that was something close to legendary.

_Which means he might just be able to take you down if he needed to_ , a treacherously tempting voice in the back of his mind whispered. He and Ty had survived sleeping in the same bed on and off for years with only a handful of incidents worse than minor bruising—not counting all the bruises and wounds that they left on each other on purpose for one reason or another. If Kelly was who Nick thought he might be, then sleeping in the same room or even the same bed as him might actually be okay.

“You said ‘get.’”

“What?” Nick blinked and tried to make Kelly’s question fit with what they’d been talking about, but he couldn’t.

“Before, when you were trying to convince me you were dangerous. You said it’d be safer if you _get_ your own room.”

“Yeah?”

“Get a room, not check in to a room, meaning you don’t actually have a room.”

“It’s winter, Kels. It’s the off season. This was a last-minute trip, but I’m sure I won’t have a problem finding a room.”

“Were you even intending to stay here?” His gesture encompassed the whole shuttle and, by extension, the resort they were being driven to.

“Uh, not specifically. As long as I can book something, though…” He shrugged.

Kelly was beginning to smirk like he was finding the whole conversation hilarious. “So you’re going to book a single room in an expensive, all-inclusive resort catering to families and couples just for the hell of it?”

“Sure. Why not?” But Nick could already see how weird the situation was.

“Fuck, you’re stubborn, Irish.” But Kelly was smiling when he said it. “Just accept half my damn package, okay? Mine is non-refundable, and there’s no reason for both of us to be pointlessly spending an obscene amount of money on a vacation neither of us really wanted to take in the first place. Take the free trip, Marine. Or think of it as payment for keeping me from self-destructing completely while I’m here. Either way, I’d consider your company a solid favor from one serviceman to another.”

Nick wanted to say no. He also abso-fucking-lutely did _not_ want to say no. Kelly was dangerous, though. With his bright eyes and his mischievous smile and his wounded heart, he was exactly Nick’s type, and that was a problem. Kelly’s wounded heart was so recent. It hadn’t even started to scab let alone heal, and Nick would only collect another scar on his look own battered heart if he tried to start something with Kelly now.

On top of that, he really was dangerous in the grips of a nightmare. Once, he’d spent the night with a girl and woken up with his loaded gun pointing straight at the center of her forehead and his hand wrapped around her throat. There hadn’t been a second attempt to share a bed. The only people he’d spent a whole night in the same room with since then had been his Sidewinder brothers. They were the only ones he trusted to be able to protect themselves from him.

But if Kelly wasn’t just a Devil Doc but _the_ Devil Doc Nick had heard stories about while he was in the service, then sleeping in the same room as him would be just as safe—physically at least—to sharing space with Sidewinder.

“Plus, the ex insisted I get a suite, so there should be plenty of space for both of us,” Kelly offered, like that tidbit might be enough to change his mind.

It was—damn both of them to hell—enough to, if not change Nick’s mind, at least stifle his self-preservation and common sense because he was suddenly listening to himself say, “Okay.”

* * *

And then they got to the room and Nick finally had a chance to look around at the space he’d be expected to share with the man he was already far too attracted to.

There was only one bed. There was only one bed in a suite clearly designed for couples looking to spend night after night of “quality time” together.

Exhaling heavily, Nick steeled himself to make the smart—but far less fun—choice. “Kelly.”

“Yeah?” He’d run straight through the room, swiped open the sliding glass door, and was now hanging so far over the edge of the balcony railing that Nick was surprised he hadn’t somersaulted right over.

“I thought you said this was a suite.”

“Yup.”

Nick sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Suites usually have more than one place to sleep, Kels.”

“Do they?”

When Nick dropped his hand and looked at Kelly again, he’d turned around and was scanning the room like he was seeing it for the first time. It also didn’t look like he was seeing anything wrong with the arrangement which compelled Nick to point out the obvious. Again.

“There’s only one bed, Kelly.”

“Yeah, but it’s a big bed.” As if to prove the point, he ran a few steps and took a flying leap that landed him starfished on his back in the middle of the bed. Even splayed out like he was, he didn’t take up the whole mattress. But that wasn’t the damn point.

“ _Nightmares, Kelly_.”

“Undefeated, Irish.” He waved off Nick’s very legitimate concerns like they were no weightier than a grain of sand. “I’d prove it to you just so you don’t have to worry about it anymore, but I don’t think the hotel would appreciate what we’d do to their furniture.”

Nick suddenly had very vivid pictures in his brain of all the _other_ ways the two of them could do some significant damage to hotel furniture. Which was exactly why staying here with Kelly wasn’t a good idea.

“Start here, okay?” Kelly’s tone had softened, his voice almost pleading. “We can take it night by night. If something happens or if it starts to get too uncomfortable, you can book your own room and I won’t say anything about it. But just…” He walked closer, and Nick’s resolve shattered as soon as he saw the nearly invisible tremble to Kelly’s full lower lip. “I would really rather not be alone right now, Nick. I know you don’t owe me anything, but I would definitely owe _you_ if you stayed.”

Nick didn’t have it in him to say no.


	3. Chapter 3

They didn’t leave the resort the rest of that first day. Kelly had canceled all of the excursions and plans he’d made for this trip even if he hadn’t canceled the trip itself, and now he needed a chance to regroup and decide what was worth doing. Especially now that he didn’t have his ex’s fears and preferences to take into consideration. Plus, this was a strange place full of people he didn’t know. He’d sleep better at night if he could identify choke points and escape routes before they became a necessity.

What he hadn’t expected was how fucking _brilliant_ it would be to do his covert reconnaissance of the resort walking along side someone who was doing the same goddamn thing. Kelly didn’t need to explain to Nick why the idea of spending too much time in the pool area gave him shivers of anxiety because Nick was already eyeing the hundreds of balconies surrounding the space with suspicion. He didn’t have to justify his preference for what might be considered the worst seat at the patio bar because Nick was already eyeing the same spot with approval. Nick had learned the same survival skills and coping mechanisms Kelly had, and so Kelly didn’t have to explain _anything_. He didn’t even have to explain why he thought it would be amazing fun to do a dive of a dangerously narrow cenote or spend two days hiking and one night in a tent just to see some of the more remote ruins. It was a level of comfortable freedom he could all too easily get used to.

Kelly had to keep reminding himself that this wasn’t his to get used to. Nick made that really fucking hard to remember, though.

“I already said I got it, you ridiculous bastard,” Kelly said, reaching for the credit card Nick was trying to hand the concierge who’d helped them book a few trips and tours that were far more adventurous than anything Kelly had previously had planned.

Nick pulled the card back before Kelly’s grip could lock down. “You ain’t winning this one, Kels, so give it up. If you’re paying for our hotel and basically everything we’re eating and drinking while we’re here, the least I can do is cover the damn tours.”

“Fine.” But Kelly was already trying to figure out sneaky ways to pay Nick back, something Nick might already guess from the suspicious look Nick gave him. The overly innocent smile Kelly gave him in return only made Nick’s eyes narrow further, but he gave the card to the warily amused concierge without further comment.

“I’ve known you less than twenty-four hours and I already don’t trust that expression on your face,” Nick muttered while their bookings were finalized.

Kelly just smiled all the brighter. This trip was suddenly going to be a _lot_ more fun than the one he thought he thought he’d be going on.

* * *

Kelly shuffled out of the restaurant after dinner, his hand pressed lightly on his abdomen. “If we eat like that every day we’re here, I think my stomach might burst by the time we leave.”

“That’s what you get for ordering three entrees.” Nick glanced at him with an amused quirk to his lips stopped in the middle of the hallway connecting the restaurant to the central lobby. They’d eaten a little early to avoid the most crowded hour, and the sun hadn’t yet set. “C’mon. We’ll walk it off and you might feel a little less miserable by the time we’re done.”

As soon as Kelly nodded, Nick led the way through the still busy pool area and past it to the wide beach. The beach faced east, so the pale sand was painted gold in the light of the setting sun behind them. Ahead, over the turquoise and deep blue water, the horizon was already a strip of dark sky and the earliest rising stars. Kelly kicked off his flip-flops and walked closer to the water. The wave washed up and over his feet, and he happily wiggled his toes deeper into the soft wet sand.

_Can you imagine what being here on honeymoon would be like?_ The question rose up from the depths of his mind, the tone of the thought coated in guilt and layered in accusation. He’d been so miserable and angry and lonely when he got on the plane that he’d literally drunk himself straight to sleep. Every second of the cab ride to the airport had been a brutal inner war between the urge to rage and take revenge with the urge to weep, give up on the world, and go live in the wilderness alone.

Nick shifted his weight and started walking along the water line. The motion jolted Kelly off his mental train of thought, and he automatically fell into step beside his new friend. Neither of them spoke. It gave him an unfortunate amount of space to keep thinking.

Did he really miss his ex? He hadn't let himself think about her specifically since The Abandonment; he'd been too focused on cancelling his circus of a wedding at the literal last minute. Now, a week after he'd last seen or talked to her, he should probably start figuring some shit out by actually facing reality instead of running from it. Like thinking her _name_ instead of mentally calling her Her and The Ex.

What would Alex be doing right now if she was here and this was their honeymoon? Well, they wouldn't be standing in quiet contemplation on the beach, that's for sure. She probably would've spent this whole day making you take her shopping and taking you into extra spa packages.

When they were together between deployments, the whole time had been him being told what their plans were and what was expected of him. They'd both seen it as him needing to make up for all the time she was left alone. But that was some bullshit, wasn't it? She acted as if his time away was some sort of vacation instead of his _job_ and a job that happened to be a seemingly endless mix of boredom, loneliness, and sheer terror. In the years since they'd met in high school, she had forgotten more about him than she remembered. It had been a long time, he suddenly realized, since he'd felt like Alex knew him at all.

The longer he thought about it, the more depressing it became. How had he been so ignorant of this for so long? Was he really so friendless and lonely he'd legally attach himself to someone who'd become a stranger years ago?

Maybe he should be thanking Alex for having the guts to walk away. He was still pissed she hadn't don't it sooner than the goddamned day before the wedding, but shit. Maybe she really had been doing what was best for both of them.

"How much do you like the shorts you're wearing?"

"What?" Kelly stopped walking and stared at Nick, trying to make the question make sense.

Smirking, Nick explained by ripping off his shirt, shucking his pants, and wading several feet out into the water in nothing but beautifully tight black boxer briefs.

Kelly almost swallowed his own tongue.

_Bless every artist who has ever been lucky enough to touch needle to that skin_. Kelly loved tattoos—he had four of his own, so he’d better love them—but he had never in his life been so viscerally turned on by the sight of someone’s ink.

In addition to the Recon jack on Nick’s left forearm, he also had a full gauntlet of intricate Celtic knotwork encasing his right forearm and a massive Marine Corps sigil on his left shoulder. The one that stopped Kelly dead, though, was the massive Celtic cross taking up the whole of Nick’s back. It was huge and full of intertwining knotwork that Kelly wanted to trace with his tongue, and it wasn’t alone. Swirls of smoke bled out from the cross, like there was fire somewhere that couldn’t be seen. It seemed like a formless decoration at first, but it only took Kelly a second to decipher the shapes on either side of the center post of the cross—skulls. There was one on each side of the cross, and somehow, one of them looked like it was screaming a war cry and the other seemed to be weeping. It was a fascinating combination of terrifying, heartbreaking, beautiful, and unsettling.

Then, Nick looked over his shoulder and threw down an unforgivable challenge. "C'mon, Kel's. Sailor like you isn't afraid of a little water, are you?"

"Oh, it's on, Marine." Kelly stripped down to his skivvies in a flash, and as he charged into the water, he found himself thinking of Alex again.

_I'm definitely not ready to forgive her, but if she hadn't left, I wouldn't be here with him._

And that would be a fucking shame.

* * *

After five days of adventure tours and adrenaline rushes, Kelly was sure of one thing. Well, two.

One, it was a crime that should end with someone's court martial that Kelly hadn't been placed on Sidewinder back in the day.

Two, Nick was just as batshit crazy as him, the redhead just hid it better under a disarming placidity and a roguish smile.

They were finally on their way back to the resort after their overnight expedition to drive of the remote Mayan ruins and the cenote dive that followed. Before that had been parasailing, cliff diving, and a canopy rope course that'd been a _lot_ more fun once they signed some waivers and were able to play on it without all the unnecessary safety equipment. They still had an emergency line to keep them from dying--they were daredevils, not suicidal--but they had finally been able to move felt one they were no longer trussed up like toddlers on leashes.

Kelly hadn't had so much fun since… well, probably since the years he spent in the foster home where he met Cameron. Those had been good years. Of course, Kelly has been, like, ten at the time, too, so it wasn't a great sign that early years with Cam were the only thing he could think to compare this to.

When they reached their room--Nick hadn't mentioned getting his own again yet, thankfully--they both dropped their packs in the first out of the way space they spotted. Kelly kept walking and headed straight for the patio and the loungers, his mind still spinning with some of the implications of his most recent realization. It was just one in a string of realizations he'd had the last few days. This one felt important, though.

"Mind if I grab first shower?" Nick called from the open sliding glass door.

"Help yourself." Kelly tried very hard not to think about that first evening and the way Nick looked when wet. He most definitely didn't succeed, but he tried.

What would Nick do if Kelly came on to him? It wouldn't end with a gay panic and a broken nose, but Kelly also had a hard time believing it would end with them naked either.

Kelly was getting a better and better read on Nick. At first it seemed as though the guy was just exceptionally and unexpectedly calm and patient for a Recon Marine. Now, Kelly guessed that even though that understanding might not be wrong, it was woefully incomplete. Nick was patient in the way a sniper was patient. It wasn’t the same serenity of a Zen master or an isolated mountain lake, no matter how still and outwardly peaceful it seemed. A sniper’s patience was the coiled danger of a predator, the constant awareness and tightly restrained destruction ready to unleash hellfire on whoever or whatever was unfortunate enough to set it off.

The idea of setting that force inside Nick loose and riding out the explosions that followed appealed to Kelly the same way learning how to manage high-altitude skydiving had. It was probably one more example of how and why Kelly was completely fucked in the head, but whatever. He was what he was at this point.

But whatever else Nick was and whatever else he might feel, the guy was unfailingly moral. He didn't rigidly follow religious morals or social morals, but Kelly had seen enough in the brief time he'd known Nick that the guy lived very strictly by his own personal morals. Fucking a guy he didn't know well? Nick probably would've been fine with that. Fucking a fellow veteran who was becoming a friend after insisting on paying for half his vacation because the vet had been left at the altar? Nick would see it as taking advantage. Or whoring himself out. Kelly wasn't quite sure. Probably the former, though, if Kelly had to bet on it. Even trying to explain how he'd come to look at the whole mess with Alex probably wouldn't help. It was too soon after the almost-wedding, and Nick probably wouldn't believe it. Kelly didn't blame him. If he wasn't inside his own head, Kelly probably wouldn't believe it either.

What did he do now that he needed a distraction from the guy who was supposed to be a distraction from the girl he was supposed to be marrying?

_Shit, I'm such a ridiculous fool._ Kelly sighed, rubbed his hands over his face, and tried not to listen to the shower running in the other room. _This is going to be a very long trip._

The thing was, sexual frustration and all, he still wouldn't trade meeting Nick for anything. Even sex. Meeting Nick _and_ getting sex would be phenomenal, but if he could only have one?

It was really no contest.


	4. Chapter 4

Nick should have known this would happen. The cave they’d been diving in that morning had been too dark and too close and too much for him to experience without repercussions.

This time, it started with the darkness and cold. He hadn’t expected the desert to be so cold before he went overseas for the first time, but the summer nights could drop into the thirties. It had been winter when the insurgents had grabbed him and Ty. The cave they’d left them in was filled with darkness so complete it was like a solid weight pressing down on him, and they were deep enough underground that the minimal heat of the winter sun never even got close to warming their air.

And then came the screams.

Sound echoed horribly off the rough stone walls, and the reverberations seemed to build instead of dissipating until it felt like battering rams against his eardrums. Their captors alternated between dragging them both out of the cave, making one of them watch what was being done to the other, and taking them one at a time, making them imagine what was happening in the central cavern to make the other scream like that. Nick never could decide which one was worse.

Tonight the screams had doubled, another voice joining Ty’s terrifyingly familiar agony. He hadn’t thought it was possible for this situation to be more

“Nick!”

Heat pressed against his ankle like a burning hot shackle. He thrashed, snapping his leg out in a blind attempt to do as much damage as possible to the assholes still torturing Ty.

“Nick, you’re okay!”

The burning shackle around his ankle broke and fell away, and Nick surged up. He’d gotten free. If he moved fast, he could kill this fucker and maybe he could get to Ty before they knew he’d gotten loose. Maybe he could get them the fuck out of here. His fists connected with flesh and—

“Oopfh, shit.” There were impacts as the fucker blocked Nick’s wild strikes. “ _Irish, wake the fuck up!_ ”

A palm connected with the center of his chest and _shoved_. Nick reached out in the dark, trying to grab hold of something to keep himself from slamming the back of his head on the rough stone of the cave—

And he landed on softness instead. The sheer shock of the sensation jolted him into consciousness and broke apart the darkness that had kept him blindfolded.

Nick’s heart thumped fast as helicopter blades, and his vision swam with spots of red. Panting for breath and disoriented, he tried to figure out where he was. There was soft light—moonlight?—filtering in from somewhere and falling in diffuse streaks across the flat, beige ceiling. Not his ceiling. Not his apartment. Did he hear the ocean nearby?

“You’re in Cancun, Mexico.” It was the voice from before, but it was far more familiar now. Shame and frustration washed through Nick as memories began to return. “You came here on vacation to take a break before your friend’s wedding. A stranger on a plane convinced you it’d be a good idea to share a room. You’re fine.”

“Shit.” Nick lifted his shaking hands to his face and scrubbed. Sweat coated his skin, and he couldn’t tell if it was coming from his face or his palms. “Are _you_ all right?”

“Absolutely.” The mattress shifted slightly under Kelly’s weight. “You got a lucky gut-shot, but you weren’t at full power yet. I’m good.”

Nick made himself move his hands and forced himself to face whatever was coming and what kind of apology he should be preparing. Instead of saying anything, though, Kels smiled gently, murmured something meaninglessly soothing, and nudged Nick farther up the bed until his head was back on the pillows again. Tension still knotted every muscle in Nick’s body and neither his pulse nor his breathing was anywhere close to normal. Part of it was the lingering fear and pain of the nightmare, part of it was knowing that he’d landed a hit on Kelly, and part of it was pure fucking dread at the questions he was sure would be coming any second.

That had been one of the bonuses of sleeping with Ty—neither of them had ever had to ask about the nightmares.

For several minutes, though, Kelly didn’t say a damn thing. He laid down next to Nick with six inches separating their bodies. The only contact they had were their hands. Kelly took Nick’s hand and started massaging it, digging into the webbing between his fingers, hitting the pressure points in his wrist, and releasing knots Nick hadn’t even realized were embedded there. After a few minutes, Nick’s breathing had evened out and he’d stopped feeling like he was shaking the whole bed. He calmed even more when Kelly gently placed Nick’s hand down on the bed and then reached across Nick’s body and stroked the back of Nick’s other hand with the tip of his finger. Nick exhaled slowly and lifted his hand without looking at Kelly. Sleep was usually impossible to find again after one of those nightmares, but tonight was different. He had never calmed down so quickly before. There was just something so undemanding and soothing about Kelly’s silent presence.

But curiosity got the better of him. “You’re not gonna ask?”

“Don’t need to. The details only matter if you want to talk about them.” Kelly started massaging again, repeating the process with Nick’s left hand. “My parents died when I was a kid. Both of them. At the same time. I got stuck in a series of foster homes and group homes after that, and some were fine, but others were awful. I still have nightmares about a lot of it. And then I decided that the Navy was my escape, and, well. We both know what kind of nightmares the sandbox can leave you with.”

“Yeah, I know.” He swallowed and turned his head to get a better look at his companion. In the moonlight, he could see only the broad strokes of Kelly’s features. The details were all lost to shadow. “I’m sorry you lost your family so young.”

Although Kelly smiled to acknowledge the words, he didn’t say anything about it being okay. How could anything like that ever be okay? He kept massaging Nick’s hand for a moment, and then he sighed. “It’s hard, you know? I joined up partially because I wanted so badly to find a family in the Navy, but it’s just…it didn’t turn out the way I expected.”

“What about Ripcord?” Nick had felt the same way when he joined the Marine’s, and finding Sidewinder had been like discovering a whole new branch of his family he hadn’t known existed. Now, they were blood in a way even his own actual blood relatives weren’t.

But Kelly shrugged. “I’d lay down my life for any one of them, and I know they’d do the same thing for me, but the team I had when I walked away was only a third of the team we’d started with. We’d already lost most of the team to ambush or accident or fucking stupid flukes like goddamn brain aneurisms.”

His grip on Nick’s hand tightened until a spark of pain shot through his hand. Nick was grateful he managed to keep himself from flinching—he didn’t want to throw Kelly off his stride. He also couldn’t imagine going to war and being prepared for losses soaked in blood and instead being faced with something as unpredictable and unpreventable as an aneurism.

“After the first couple losses, the team just…” Kelly went silent for a moment, and Nick wasn’t sure if there was more resignation or more frustration in his friend right now. “It was like everyone expected the rest of the guys to drop off one by one and so they stopped trying to be anything more than an effective team. Plus, they all thought I was batshit. And only kind of in a good way.”

“All of Sidewinder is batshit. Entirely not in a good way.”

“So I’d heard,” Kelly said with a sad smile. “It was one of the reasons I always wanted to meet you guys so badly.”

“I’m sorry your team lost so many. Sidewinder, we…” <> “It came close a lot of times, so many I wish I’d been able to lose count, but in the end, we somehow always made it home.”

“Who’d you have as a corpsman?”

“Tyler’s younger brother, actually.” He still remembered Tyler’s reaction when he heard his baby brother was going to forego college and follow him into the service. Ty hadn’t been able to decide if he was more proud or furious. “It was a miracle they ended up on the same team, but there’s a lot of family history with the military, and they’ve got some connections in fucking ridiculous places. Deuce is awesome, and we all loved him, but there were definitely moments when the sibling rivalries got a little old.”

“Must have been damn good at his job if he kept you all alive.”

“He was.”

“Good.” The single word was quiet and yet layered with so much emotion. What hit Nick the most was how truly relieved Kelly seemed to know that the person looking out for them overseas had been both committed and competent. Kelly hadn’t even ever met any of the other guys, but it seemed like it was enough that they were Nick’s people and that Nick cared about them.

That as much everything else about Kelly kept Nick talking. “Kid has gotten his Pd.D. in psychiatry since we all got out, so he’s still working on fixing people.”

“I can understand the urge.” Kelly finished the massage on Nick’s left hand, but he didn’t let go. Instead, he linked their fingers and let their joined hands rest on Nick’s abdomen. “I’ve been accused of being a bit of a fixer myself more than once.”

Not a surprise. The man had both latched onto and adopted Nick the moment they met, and everything they’d done since then had been as much about distracting Kelly from the wedding-that-wasn’t as it had been about Kelly making sure Nick was comfortable and having a good time.

It was amazing how comfortable Nick felt in this moment. They were wrapped in moonlight and sharing secrets in whispers, and Nick hadn’t ever connected with anyone this quickly. Not even Ty. He’d been fascinated with Ty the moment he saw him, and he’d grown attached to the guy pretty quickly, but their secrets had stayed secret for a while. Revelations had come in bits and pieces, and they’d been spread out over a long time. Here, with Kelly, Nick had a harder time keeping things back than he did at the idea of sharing. It felt a little like slowly and painlessly lancing an infected wound, and Nick didn’t want the moment to end.

But was he really ready to take it this far with someone he’d known less than a week? When Kelly started gently running his thumb along the line of Nick’s hand and the simple soothing motion did nothing but send shivers of pleasure across Nick’s skin, he realized that, yes. He really was going to take this leap and see what happened.

For once, it felt almost like a certainty that someone would be there to catch him.

“Ty and I were taken.”

Kelly stilled. In the low light, Nick could just make out the flicker of his gaze shifting up to Nick’s face and then away, but he didn’t say anything. He simply took a breath and started stroking Nick’s hand again.

“It took us twenty-three days to find a way out.” Twenty-three days, nine hours, and fifty-one minutes. But who the fuck had counted?

“Did you get them all?” Nothing in Kelly’s posture had changed, and his thumb still moved gently along the Nick’s skin, but there was steel and fire in his voice. “Are they dead?”

Nick only hesitated a second before he answered. “Yes.”

“ _Good._ ”

That reaction surprised a breathless laugh out of Nick. He couldn’t believe it. The idea of _laughing_ in the middle of telling someone about this should have been unthinkable. Kelly really was something else.

“Is that…” Kelly hesitated, his gaze flicking up to Nick’s face again. “Were you back there tonight?”

“Yeah.” Swallowing the memories and pretending he couldn’t hear the roughness of his own voice, he closed his eyes and rolled a little closer to Kelly. “It’s been a while since it hit me like that, but it never really goes away.”

“Few wounds do, not when they’re deep enough.”

“What happened there…” Nick had to open his eyes. He fixed his focus on Kelly to push away the memories trying to overwhelm him. Everything was always too close to the surface after one of those nightmares. “That’s what changed things for me and Ty. I knew that the shit we went through, everything that happened, after that we’d either never be able to look at each other again or we’d be closer than ever, and I knew which one I wanted, so I left it to Ty.”

Kelly squeezed his hand and shifted another inch closer until their thighs almost touched. It gave Nick enough to keep telling this story. “The day after we were both finally released from the hospital, he just fucking walked right up to me and kissed me.”

 _If you’re going to punch me for the kiss, fine, but I had to do it,_ Ty had said. His forehead had still been resting against Nick’s and his breath had danced across Nick’s skin, and the whole moment had been so shocking that the only think Nick had known how to do was freeze. _I don’t want what happened in that place to be the last memory of touching you that I have. I don’t want to let them destroy us any more than they already have._

Ty had tried to move away then, and it had woken Nick right the fuck up. He’d growled and gripped Ty’s bruised and battered face between his hands, yanking him back in for another kiss. Ty had flinched from the pain as much as the shock of getting kissed instead of punched, but then he’d ripped into Nick in the best of ways. They’d shed clothes and wished they could shed memories of what they’d just survived as easily. Nick had thought it was perfection. He’d thought it was the beginning of something that was going to last for the rest of his life.

“How long were you together?” The hesitation in the way Kelly asked the question told Nick that not answering at all would be a perfectly acceptable option.

Maybe that was why Nick kept being honest. “Less than a year.”

“Did the rest of Sidewinder ever know you were together?”

“Then? Fuck no. DADT. They know now, though. It bubbled up to the surface not long after Ty came out to the team by introducing them to Zane.” And hadn’t that been a damn day. “Zane’s the guy he’s marrying now.”

Kelly nodded, but Nick didn’t get the sense he cared much about Zane. Instead, he asked, “How’d it end between you two?”

“Painfully.” The bitterness in the single word was clear even to Nick who had gotten very, _very_ good at pretending to be over it. When Kelly made a small noise like someone had sucker punched him, Nick sighed. “We didn’t last beyond our discharge. He joined the FBI and wanted me to go with him, but I… I couldn’t do it. I had reasons, and I still think I was right to say no, but Ty flipped his shit. We had a fight that was just… Jesus, Kels. When I remember what we said to each other that day. It was—it was just—”

“Below the belt with a morning star?” Kelly offered when Nick couldn’t find the words to continue.

“Yeah.”

“Makes sense. No one knows how to hurt us better than the people we love.” It was an adage delivered with the gravity of one who’s lived its truth.

“We didn’t talk to each other for almost a year after that.” Nick grunted remembering the bullshit they put everyone through that year. “It was so fucking middle school, man, but we used the rest of the team as intermediaries because I refused to speak to him until he apologized.”

“And he refused to apologize?” Kelly guessed, and Nick nodded, because that was exactly what had happened and it had made that whole year hellish. “How are you guys still close enough friends that he asked you to be the best man? Especially when he’s got a brother?”

“Deuce is officiating.”

“Hmm.” A silence settled again, but there was something expectant in it. Nick found himself wishing there was more light in the room so he could get a better read on Kelly’s expression. Maybe then he wouldn’t have felt so sideswiped when Kelly asked, “Do you still love him?”

“Yes.” They were so close that Nick couldn’t help but feel the twitch that passed through Kelly at his answer, and he had to explain. It really wasn’t as simple as a yes or no answer. “It’s not the same anymore, though. I can’t not love Ty—we’ve pulled each other through too much to ever sever the bond, you know? But it’s different, and I’m starting to think…”

“What are you starting to think, Nick?” Kelly asked when the silence went on too long.

He took a long breath, let it out slowly, and tried to get his thoughts in some sort of order. He’d spent so long trying not to let himself linger in this part of his mind that now he had a hard time navigating any of it. “That maybe what I feel when I think about him getting married isn’t because I love him enough to want him for myself. I think maybe I just want what he has. I want someone who looks at me the way Zane looks at Ty and the way Ty looks back. I mean, shit. Ty never, not once, looked at me like that.”

“It’s okay to want that, Nick. Hell, _I_ want that.” He shifted closer and slowly intertwined their legs. “You sure you’re okay with watching the wedding, though?”

“Yeah. I love him well enough to be happy, and it fucking hurts that I couldn’t be enough for him, but it didn’t work before, and it probably wouldn’t work again,” Nick admitted. “I know that.”

“It’s not a crime to want to be happy, Nick,” Kell said, his tone almost painfully gentle. “I mean, I was foolish enough to think marrying a girl I started dating in high school was a good idea even though we’ve probably only spent one year out of the last ten together and neither of us really knew who the other person was anymore. I’ve been an orphan for so long I couldn’t bring myself to let go of what seemed like my only chance at family.”

“I can’t believe you don’t have anyone.” Nick had never met someone as open, genuine, and _fun_. He didn’t understand why Kelly’s life wasn’t _overflowing_ with people who wanted to bask in his glow. “You’re… I mean, I’m a sarcastic bastard with a mountain of baggage, and you’re…”

“Ridiculous?” Kelly asked, tone twisted with wry self-depreciation.

“Like _sunshine_.” Screw everyone else. How could _Kelly_ not see how amazing he was? “You’ve got this aura about you that is fucking compelling. I mean, shit. I’ve known you for _days_ , Kels, and you’ve already got more out of me about Ty and our captivity than I’ve told some of _Sidewinder_.”

Kelly had gone still while Nick talked, so still it didn’t even feel like he was breathing for a few seconds. “You—do you mean that?”

“I seem like someone who says shit just to be nice?” Nick released Kelly’s hand and slid his fingers up Kelly’s arm. “Do you really not have anyone?”

“I have friends,” Kelly said slowly. “I have comrades. I have people I can borrow a hundred bucks from and people who will go get a beer with me any time I ask and people who wouldn’t mind if I crashed in their guest room for a night on my way through town, but people like you’ve got Sidewinder?” He held up one finger. “One person. One and a half if I’m being generous.”

“One and _half_?”

That got a very small smile out of Kelly. “I got lucky in one of my first foster homes. There was a boy there a little younger than me. His name was Cameron, and even though we were only housed together for a couple of years before we both got moved other places, I managed to keep track of him. He’s my brother in all but blood.”

“And the half?”

“His husband Julian. I’m Cam’s family, so that means I’m Julian’s as well, but I don’t have any illusions about why Julian gives a shit about how I’m doing. He’s a good enough guy—fucking _worships_ Cam—but anything he does to help me is because helping me would make Cam happy.”

“There are worse reasons.”

“Especially when you’re talking about an on-again, off-again hitman for the CIA.”

This time, Nick was the one to freeze. “Well…yes. That does change the conversation a bit.” And also made him nervous as hell for numerous reasons. Both for himself and for Kelly. And then he thought of something else. “Am I supposed to know that little fact?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

“ _I’m_ not even supposed to know, but I met too many fucking spooks and operators in the desert not to eventually recognize one in civilian life if I spend enough time with them.”

“Yeah, me too. Never met one I liked much, either, though.”

Kelly huffed something that could almost be called a laugh. “Right? Julian isn’t awful. Granted, I’m pretty sure Cam makes him almost human, so I’ve never seen him in work mode, but he takes care of my brother. I try to forget about everything else.”

“I’m sure he appreciates that.” Nick squeezed Kelly’s shoulder and then let his hand trail back down toward Kelly’s hand. He didn’t miss the goosebumps that rose on Kelly’s skin at the touch. The urge to slip hid hand around Kelly’s waist and close the small remaining gap between their bodies was strong, but there was something that still felt fragile about this moment. And about himself. Just because the hand massages and the conversation had calmed him down from the nightmare didn’t mean a new wave of aftershocks wouldn’t rip through him if he wasn’t careful. Besides, whatever Kelly said about recognizing he wouldn’t have been happy if he’d married his ex-fiancé, that didn’t mean he was over her. Nick didn’t think even a full week had passed since the date of the aborted wedding. That wasn’t enough time to be ready for anything but a rebound or a one-night stand.

If he started anything with Kelly, he wanted to at least feel like he had a small chance of getting him for a lot longer than one night.

 _And isn’t that thought a kick in the fucking nuts?_ Because, really, what were the chances of them keeping in touch long enough for that to happen?

“Happy is a defense mechanism.”

Nick had been so lost in his own thoughts that Kelly’s statement seemed to come out of nowhere. It felt like he’d missed the whole beginning of a new conversation since he couldn’t twist that statement any way to connect it to what they’d been talking about before. Finally, he had to ask, “What do you mean?”

“I was a happy enough kid before my parents died, but after?” Kelly dropped his chin a little, curling into himself just a bit. “Cam was one of the few people who just let me be sad. Everyone else kept expecting me to get over it, and slowly I realized that acting like everything was fine and making everyone else laugh got me more than letting anyone see when I was hurting.” He lifted one shoulder, but he was still so caved in that Nick didn’t believe the pretended indifference for a second. “Eventually, it became a habit, and most of the time it’s not even a façade, but…”

“But the sun can’t shine 24/7.”

“ _Exactly_.” Kelly’s head tilted up, and Nick could almost make out the pale color of his eyes in the moonlight. “And in the last few years it got to feel like it wasn’t a defense mechanism anymore but a fucking burden, like if I wasn’t the happy, ridiculous Kelly everyone expected, I’d be letting people down.”

“Fuck that.” He felt himself becoming genuinely annoyed on Kelly’s behalf. “You’re not responsible for being anyone’s entertainment.”

“You’d think that but you’d be wrong,” Kelly retorted. “Any time I let it go, it was all ‘The fuck crawled up your ass today, Abbott?’ and shit. No one got me, man, and I got tired of waiting for anyone to try, so I gave up and kept pretending to be fine.”

“Is that why you left the service?”

“Partially.” He sighed and seemed to sag a little heavier into the pillowy mattress. “I was just tired. I couldn’t do it anymore. I was starting to forget what the point of it all was or what we were all fighting for.”

“Then I’m glad you got out before you turned into someone you didn’t like.”

“Why’d you leave?” Kelly asked.

“Classified.”

Kelly looked up sharply at that. “Really? Shit. I can’t even think of what that might mean.”

“Honestly, Kels, I lived through it and I’m not even sure what it means.” But the way things ended with the Marines was step one in the way things ended with Ty. Nick knew that much even if he still didn’t know exactly how one piece connected to the next in that fucking labyrinthine clusterfuck.

“Tell me about your house.”

Not the topic he’d expected to come up next. “My house?”

“Yeah. When this is over and you go back to Boston, where’s home? Tell me about your place.”

“Well, I don’t have a house, for one.” Meanwhile, his mind spun. _When this is over_. The longer he knew Kelly, the more he realized that he didn’t really want it to be over.

“Your apartment. Condo. Duplex. What-the-fuck-ever.”

Nick raised one eyebrow and waited until he was sure Kelly was finished. “As I was saying, I don’t have a house, I have a boat.”

“You live on a boat?” Kelly sounded incredulous.

“Yeah.”

“That’s kinda sexy, Irish. Now I definitely want to hear all about it.”

Nick laughed softly. “She’s named _Fiddler’s Green_ , and she’s in a harbor close to the edge of the city.”

“With good escape routes to the sea?” Kelly asked.

“Yes. Obviously.”

“Fantastic.” Kelly settled in deeper, fluffing his pillow under his head and watching Nick with rapt attention. “Tell me more.”

So, pushing thoughts of the painful past and the uncertain future aside, that’s exactly what Nick did.


End file.
